20-Minute Stair Workout

Climbing stairs is a fantastic way to tone your glutes, thighs, and calf muscles, all while increasing your heart rate. But if you’re not someone who enjoys the monotonous StairMaster (or don’t have access to one) this workout may be perfect for you.

Here is our 20-minute stair workout that you can do in your gym or around town.

Stair Workout – The Exercises

Warm Up

Make sure you do a quick warm up and stretch before starting your stair workout. A simple and effective warm up could look like jogging, jumping jacks, or slow lunges. Once you’ve warmed up, start these ten exercises.

Alternating Right and Left Lunge Ups

Slowly lunge up your flight of stairs, alternating each time. Depending on the width and steepness of stairs, this may be 2-3 sets of stairs for each lunge. Make sure to even out your legs.

Right side lunge ups

Turn to face the left and slowly side lunge up your staircase.

Left side lunge ups

Repeat on the other side.

Regular Jump-ups

Standing with feet hip-width apart, jump up one stair at a time. You can either jump quickly for a calf-focused exercise or jump slowly with deeper squats for a butt and thigh exercise.

Double Jump-ups

This exercise will get your heart rate up. Start on the ground step and jump before climbing the stairs. In other words, you’ll jump on each stair twice before moving up.

Right Single leg jump ups (can be done as doubles)

Now we’re isolating one leg and jumping up a single stair. If your balance isn’t there yet, do these as doubles– you’ll get a killer calf workout.

Left Single leg jump-ups (can be done as doubles)

Repeat on the left side.

Right Criss-cross Jump-ups

Reference the video for this exercise, but what you want to focus on is pulling your single leg underneath you, across the step. What this does is target your inner thigh muscles.

Left Criss-cross Jump-ups

Repeat on the left side.

Two/three Step Jump-ups

Here is your finale. Depending on your step width and height, you want to squat jump all the way up your stairs.

REPEAT

To get a full workout, repeat this entire routine 2-3 times, depending on your fitness level. You’ve completed a stair workout, all under 20 minutes. Congrats!